Christina Jump, a longtime Dallas-based attorney who leads the civil litigation department of the Richardson-based Muslim Legal Fund of America’s Constitutional Law Center for Muslims in America, is leaving to launch a solo practice.
In her solo practice, Jump will continue serving as lead counsel in 16 active cases for American Muslims for Palestine, as well as in litigation brought by two professors suing the University of Texas at Dallas and several individual plaintiffs pursuing claims ranging from workplace religious accommodation disputes to challenges to federal watchlisting. She will also remain part of the legal team representing four University of Texas at Austin student protestors.
“I love the work that I do and my relationships with my clients and am thrilled that the votes of confidence of my clients as well as the support I have will allow me to continue these important cases in my solo capacity, without charging the clients I’ve represented free of charge to date,” Jump said. “I am grateful that MLFA sees the value in these cases as well as my role in them as lead counsel and agreed to cover the costs in many of them. And once I fully begin my solo practice, I plan to apply for grants that should enable me to bridge the remaining gaps.”
Jump joined the Constitutional Law Center for Muslims in America in March 2016 when it operated as a standalone 501(c)(3) funded by an MLFA grant. It merged with MLFA in 2022.
Jump’s last day is Friday. She said the decision to depart was driven largely by a growing workload.
“Unfortunately, the ever-increasing number of clients asking for help and whom nonprofits like MLFA want to assist greatly outpaced the resources and time I had available to devote to them,” Jump said. “So, with fewer clients yet a still robust litigation docket for the future, I look forward to being able to work each case more deeply and interact with each client more directly and often.”
Former Constitutional Law Center Director Charles Swift will lead the group while MLFA searches for Jump’s successor, MLFA Legal Director Marium Uddin said.
“MLFA is grateful to Christina Jump for her 10 years of dedicated and skillful service,” Uddin said. “Following her departure, we will continue to work with her on selected cases as she remains an important part of our work for the community. During her time at MLFA, Christina built an extraordinary staff of young attorneys in whom we have full confidence.”
In her new practice, Jump plans to pursue grant funding to support a civil rights docket focused on religious rights and religious accommodation, approached through an interfaith lens.
An Episcopalian who serves on the vestry of Episcopal Church of Transfiguration in Dallas, Jump said her favorite cases have been those rooted in interfaith collaboration. She pointed to a pro bono case handled jointly with Perkins Coie in which they represented Jewish and Muslim inmates seeking to force the Arizona Department of Corrections, Rehabilitation and Reentry to reinstate religiously compliant meal plans. As a result, the department restored Kosher meal options. Her representation of American Muslims for Palestine has also involved coordination with Jewish Voice for Peace and multiple Lutheran and nondenominational groups, she noted.
A former labor and employment attorney who has practiced at Littler Mendelson, Jackson Walker and Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, Jump said she first applied to MLFA after responding to a vague job posting for a nonprofit. Though not Muslim herself, she said the mission resonated because the work centers on “pure law.”
“We argue about the Constitution and argue directly what the law means,” Jump said. “I remember people saying, ‘This is where the need is now. Back in the time of World War II, it was Japanese Americans who had need,’ and that made sense to me. It really is just arguing for the law to be applied equally, and it happens to be here.”
Jump, a 2012 president of the Dallas Women Lawyers Association, currently serves as secretary for the DWLA Foundation.